livingshinigami

I saw this meme on

falena84's journal last week & thought it would be fun to do as well, since it's now Wednesday again. I don't think I'll be doing these every week as I don't read fast enough for that, but I might use this format to check in on my reading progress every once in a while ...

2019 books finished: 0

Just read

It's been a while since I last finished a book. It was 'Patria' by Fernando Aramburu, which I read for my book club meeting of December 12th. I can't even remember the exact date on which I finished it (because apparently I can't recall that information on my Goodreads account? - or else I'm just looking in the wrong place). It wasn't a bad book but not a favourite either ; it felt too long and I didn't care much for any of the characters, so I often didn't feel very motivated to pick up the book and continue reading.

Reading

There are so many books that I'm in the middle of reading, but haven't finished ...

01. 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Brontë - page 220 of 353 ; my main read at the moment is the book we're reading for the next book club meeting. It had only been since page 200 or something that I'm starting to get into the story and care somewhat to learn what will happen to the characters. It's been slow-going because I often didn't feel super motivated to pick up this book. I haven't quite made up my mind yet about whether I like 'Wuthering Heights' or not ...

02. 'Alias Grace' by Margaret Atwood - page 75 of 545 ; I began reading this book right after I'd finished 'Patria' but stopped to give precedence to 'Wuthering Heights'. I enjoyed whatever little I read of it - the writing style reminds me a lot of the dialogue from the Netflix series (I keep reading the book in the actress' voice!). I guess Netflix made a very faithful adaptation, and I liked the tv show so I suppose I'll like the book as well.

03. 'War and Peace' by Leo Tolstoy - page 570 of 1522 ; I've already made good progress with this tome, but it's simply a huge book and I'm trying to read other books in between. I'm enjoying 'War and Peace' more than I thought I would, it reads more fluent than I had expected - but I'm a slow reader so I'm still not making very quick progress.

04. 'The Pillow Book' by Sei Shounagon - page ??? of 364 ; I LOVE this book. It's so incredibly fascinating. It's a collection of musings and oberservations written by a court lady in 990-1000's Heian Japan. It's rare to have such personal writing from more than a thousand years ago and written by a woman as well! It's amazing how this woman lived so long ago, on the other side of the world in such a vastly different culture and society, yet some of the things she writes are so recognisable in my 21st-century Western European world! However, due to the age of the text and the differences in culture, I have to refer to the author's notes at the end of the book a lot - which makes reading go verryy verrrryyyy slowly.

05. 'Belgravia' by Julian Fellowes - page 48 of 411 ; I borrowed this from the library in summer and enjoyed what little I read of it. It's a book about English high society in the 19th century (one of my favourite themes) written by the guy who wrote Downton Abbey (one of my favourite tv shows). I had to return it to the library when I left on vacation to Austria because I couldn't extend the lease until after my return, and after that other books took precendence so I never borrowed it again. I should though ...

There are more books on this list, haha - but these are the most important ones.

Up next

When I finish 'Wuthering Heights' I will continue reading one of the books mentioned above - probably 'Alias Grace'. The next new book will probably be whichever one we choose at our next book club meeting on February 6th, so no idea yet which one that'll be.